Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an improved disposable razor having a self-contained supply of brushless shave cream in its hollow handle in an amount that is sufficient to shave approximately 40 to 45 square inches. After one use of the device the razor is discarded.
Due to certain and various social behavior, transmittal of disease via blood or by its components has become a substantively serious concern and issue of public health. In particular, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), Hepatitus B, Hepatitus Non-A and Hepatitus Non-B are disease that are transmitted by blood either by direct transfusion or indirectly by the use of contaminated appliances.
A very real control problem seems to exist in the medical community, including hospitals, where pre-operational preparations, biopsy punch preparation, maternal delivery or emergency suturing may require shaving about small body areas. More generally, the shaving procedure relies on the availability of a centrally located and conveniently acessible multiuse can or container of aerosol shaving cream. As a practical matter, it is found rarely that such container(s) are available when needed because the container(s) usually finds itself relocated for use outside the required areas or of the hospital. Patients then receive a dry shave or at best a shave with lather from a cake of hand soap or the like. Further, a pre-operational prep nurse when given a container of aerosol shaving cream will use it and a single razor to complete a number of scheduled pre-operational preparations. Further, what amounts to a community razor is sometimes routinely used in the emergency room of medical facilities for various shaving requirements over several intervals and on several patients, some of whom may possess excessively hairy sections or areas that thereafter have to accept electrodes of an EKG or for preparing an area for suturing and the like. Such practice may result in the transmission of disease due to razor "nicks" and "pre-scalping".
A nominal length of the standard commercially available disposable razor is generally 90 mm. and by using approximately 42 mm of the hollow handle as a reservoir, an approximately five-tenths of a gram of shaving cream may be stored in the nominal 2700 cubic mm volume therein. This amount is sufficient to shave approximately 50 square inches, or 322 cm.sup.2 of skin surface.